How do you pitch Sequoia Capital?

Who Sequoia actually is

Founded in 1972 by Don Valentine, Sequoia is the most storied firm in venture capital: first investors in Apple (1978), Cisco, Google, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Stripe, Airbnb and Nvidia, where a $1M cheque in 1993 is now worth tens of billions. In November 2025, Alfred Lin and Pat Grady became joint stewards of the firm, succeeding Roelof Botha. Lin ranked number one on the Forbes Midas List in 2021 and 2025.

Why the evergreen fund changes how you pitch

In 2021 Sequoia restructured into an evergreen vehicle, the Sequoia Capital Fund, which can hold stock long after IPO. Nothing forces them to sell, ever. That structure changes the evaluation: a partner is not asking whether you can return capital in seven years, they are asking whether this is a company worth owning for twenty. A pitch that only paints the next 18 months undersells itself in that room. The narrative needs a credible picture of the decade.

The money, and what they write at each stage

In October 2025 Sequoia announced $950M in new early-stage funds: a $750M fund for Series A and a $200M dedicated seed fund, deliberately matching the sizes launched three years earlier. Average cheques run roughly $8.6M at seed, $17.7M at Series A and $68.1M at Series B. Their pace, around 80 new investments a year over the last decade, is unusually high for a Tier 1 firm. Partner Bogomil Balkansky's framing: the strategy stays consistent, and they are always looking for outlier founders building generational businesses.

Sequoia at seed and pre-seed

The $200M seed fund is an explicit push into first cheques. Companies like Xbow, Traversal and Reflection AI took Sequoia money before there was much product. The catch is that pre-seed at Sequoia is not pre-seed from an angel: with no product to judge, the entire weight of the evaluation lands on the founder, so the bar on founder quality rises rather than falls. Airbnb is the reference case, a $585K seed cheque in 2009 that became a $4.8B stake at IPO.

How they say to approach them

Sequoia's own FAQ says to start with a warm introduction, and they operate the largest scout programme in venture, over 1,000 scouts including portfolio founders and operators, precisely to surface referred deals. In 2025 they made 122 investments out of thousands of inbound approaches. The route in is a referral from someone whose judgement they already trust, followed by a pitch that reads like the first chapter of a 20-year company.

Before any partner meeting, remember the deal still has to survive the internal write-up. It helps to see the investment committee paper investors write about you before you walk in.

Gian Seehra Ex-Octopus Ventures, part of deploying $200M as a VC. 3x founder, raised $16M. Has coached 120+ founders who have raised $250M+ collectively.